Helping your Child Learn to Read
I feel as a parent that it is crucial for our children to learn
to read at an early age. I know that some parents don't think
about their child learning to read until around first grade of
school. My thoughts are that the schools alone can't teach our
children to read. It takes so much more in this day and time.
Parents need to get involved with their child's reading at am
early age. I feel starting them at the age of four is a great
age. As any parent we want our children to strive to be their
best in school. If we as parent s don't start getting more
involved then our children are going to fall behind in school.
Before your child starts school they need to recognize their
alphabet, and know their basic sight words. Teach your child
their alphabet. Then your child needs some time everyday to have
a chance to see these basic sight words. Ten minutes a day is
about all you can get out of a four year old but that is all
they need. After seeing those words enough they will pick up on
them and begin to show it. I feel even on weekends is important.
They need this every single day for them to learn. I have 5
children. I practiced this with every one of them but my last
one. He was a sick baby and I just didn't push him to learn
those words. Now he is in kindergarten and he is behind the rest
of the class. I also volunteer in his class and these teachers
are expected to do so much and they can not get to these sight
words but maybe once a week. This is why it is so imperative to
go over these sight words with your little ones. If they learn
them at age four then they won't have a problem when the teacher
can't get to the words on a daily basis at school. Mom and dad
are there to help out at home. I have found if you take the
sight words and put each word on an index card and go over these
words daily with your child is the best method for learning.
Make it fun. Once your child has the basic words down to where
they can look at the word and within 3 seconds (this is the
limit set by most school systems) tell you what the word is they
can go on to reading beginner books. You can take your child to
the local library and allow them to pick out beginner books that
they would want to read. Replace the time that you had set aside
for the sight words with reading these books. While letting your
child read with your help, ask your child to point to the words
while they are reading. This helps in recognizing words as they
read also known as sight reading. I know that it doesn't seem
like much but this method helps out allot. These are just a few
things that we as parents can do to help get our children on the
right path of learning and having a better education. If a child
gets discouraged while learning it becomes more of a task to
them and not fun. They will then try to steer away from the
learning process all together. So try to make learning as fun as
possible. If your child messes up let them know that it is okay
to mess up, that is why it is called learning. Below you should
find a link that will send you to a list of basic sight words.